Cited by 7,143Psychological Well-being and Life SatisfactionOptimism, Hope, and Well-beingAging and Gerontology Research

The benefits of frequent positive affect: Does happiness lead to success?

Open access
Lyubomirsky, Sonja, King, Laura, Diener, Ed·2005·Psychological Bulletin

Abstract

Numerous studies show that happy individuals are successful across multiple life domains, including marriage, friendship, income, work performance, and health. The authors suggest a conceptual model to account for these findings, arguing that the happiness-success link exists not only because success makes people happy, but also because positive affect engenders success. Three classes of evidence--crosssectional, longitudinal, and experimental--are documented to test their model. Relevant studies are described and their effect sizes combined meta-analytically. The results reveal that happiness is associated with and precedes numerous successful outcomes, as well as behaviors paralleling success. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that positive affect--the hallmark of well-being--may be the cause of many of the desirable characteristics, resources, and successes correlated with happiness. Limitations, empirical issues, and important future research questions are discussed.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1037/0033-2909.131.6.803

Cites

444 of 444 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Happiness is correlated with, predictive of, and causally determinative of success in multiple domains of life including social, relational, financial, work and mental and physical health domains.

    “Lyubomirsky, King, and Diener (2005) demonstrated that happiness is correlated with, predictive of, and causally determinative of success in multiple domains of life including social, relational, financial, work and (mental and physical) health domains.”

    From Rational beliefs, happiness and optimism: An empirical assessment of REBT's model of psychological health (2019) · cites this paper as Lyubomirsky, King, and Diener (2005)

    The Abstract and Summarizing the Evidence (pages not supplied) support correlations across life domains and longitudinal evidence that happiness precedes some successful outcomes. But the experimental evidence concerns short-term positive affect causing behaviors paralleling success; the authors say evidence that happiness leads to successful outcomes is strong but not conclusive. Calling happiness ‘causally determinative’ of success across the listed domains overstates the source. (LLM, conf=0.90)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • Addressing specific skills in positive psychology domains can promote overall well-being.

    “Evidence has accrued that addressing specific skills in these domains can promote overall well-being [18,19].”

    From Feasibility and effectiveness of a web-based positive psychology program for youth mental health: Randomized controlled trial (2014) · cites this paper as [18]

    The Process Issues: Mediation section (page unavailable) suggests that happiness-increasing interventions should help people adopt practices and habits that foster positive experiences and emotions. It does not show that addressing specific skills in the cited domains promotes overall well-being; the Conclusion instead reports evidence chiefly in the other direction, that positive affect fosters skills and other favorable characteristics. (LLM, conf=0.76)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • Happiness is an antecedent, correlate and predictor of positive psychological outcomes.

    “What remained constant across different studies is the formulation that happiness is an antecedent, correlate and predictor of positive psychological outcomes (Parks, Della Porta, Pierce, Zilca, & Lyubomirsky, 2012;Lyubomirsky, Diener, & King, 2005).”

    From Exploring Filipino adolescents’ conception of happiness (2012) · cites this paper as Lyubomirsky, Diener, & King, 2005

  • People who are happier with their day-to-day life tend to be more extroverted, energetic, lively, sociable, interested in exploring new things, and engaged in social interactions.

    “In general, people who are happier with their day-to-day life tend to be more extroverted, energetic, lively, sociable, interested in exploring new things, and engaged in social interactions (Lin et al., 2017; Lyubomirsky et al., 2005).”

    From Risk, Trust, and the Roles of Human Versus Virtual Influencers (2024) · cites this paper as Lyubomirsky et al., 2005

  • Positive affect is strongly related to happiness and success, thereby promoting adherence to physical activities.

    “Positive affect is strongly related happiness and success (Lyubomirsky et al. 2005), thereby promoting adherence to physical activities (Schneider et al. 2009).”

    From Adolescents’ dual affective response to dance in training, grading, and competition (2020) · cites this paper as Lyubomirsky et al. 2005

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 13

  1. [60]60. Chen, S.-M. (1980). A study of sociometric status of Chinese school children (Chinese). Bulletin of Educational Psychology, 13, 119 -132.
  2. [161]161. Graen, T. (1976). Role-making processes within complex organizations. In M. D. Dunnette (Ed.), Handbook of organizational and industrial psy- chology (pp. 1201-1245). Chicago: Rand McNally.
  3. [163]163. Gray, J. A. (1994). Personality dimensions and emotion systems. In P. Ekman & R. J. Davidson (Eds.), The nature of emotion (pp. 329 -331). New York: Oxford University Press.
  4. [173]173. Hektner, J. M. (1997). Exploring optimal personality development: A longitudinal study of adolescents. Dissertation Abstracts International, 57(11B), 7249. (UMI No. AAM9711187)
  5. [220]220. Lebo, D. (1953). Some factors said to make for happiness in old age. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 9, 385-387.
  6. [236]236. Lucas, R. E., & Diener, E. (2003). The happy worker: Hypotheses about the role of positive affect in worker productivity. In M. Burrick & A. M. Ryan (Eds.), Personality and work (pp. 30 -59). San Francisco: Jossey- Bass.
  7. [258]258. Matikka, L. M., & Ojanen, M. (in press). Happiness in persons with intellectual disabilities. European Journal of Mental Disability.
  8. [262]262. McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. (1991). Adding Liebe un Arabeit: The fully five-factor model and well-being. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 17, 227-232.
  9. [268]268. Miller, S. M., & Schnoll, R. A. (2000). When seeing is feeling: A cognitive-emotional approach to coping with health stress. In M. Lewis & J. M. Haviland-Jones (Eds.), Handbook of emotions (2nd ed., pp. 538 -557). New York: Guilford Press.
  10. [291]291. Peplau, L. A., & Perlman, D. (Eds.). (1982). Loneliness. New York: Wiley.
  11. [298]298. Leal, T. Botelho, & J. P. Ribeiro (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th Conference of the Health Psychology Society (pp. 9 -12). Lisbon, Portugal: Institute for the Application of Psychology.
  12. [304]304. Pritzker, M. A. (2002). The relationship among CEO dispositional at- tributes, transformational leadership behaviors and performance effec- tiveness. Dissertation Abstracts International, 62(12-B), 6008. (UMI No. AAI3035464)
  13. [316]316. Rosenstock, I. M., & Kirscht, J. P. (1979). Why people seek healthcare. In G. C. Stone, N. G. Cohen, & N. E. Adler (Eds.), Health psychology-A handbook (pp. 161-188). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Lyubomirsky, S., King, L., & Diener, E.
Affiliations
  • University of California, Riverside (US)
  • University of Missouri (US)
  • University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US)
Venue
Psychological Bulletin
Published
2005-11
Volume
131
Issue
6
Pages
803-855
ISSN
  • 0033-2909 (ISSN-L)
  • 1939-1455
OpenAlex
W2108577177
Cited by
7,143
References
437
Citations by year
2026: 228 · 2025: 437 · 2024: 436 · 2023: 510 · 2022: 461 · 2021: 506 · 2020: 557 · 2019: 435 · 2018: 430 · 2017: 392 · 2016: 372 · 2015: 386 · 2014: 390 · 2013: 340 · 2012: 324
FWCI
11.68
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Psychological Bulletin (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
  • SSRN Electronic Journal (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Optimism, Hope, and Well-being
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology › Aging and Gerontology Research
Keywords
happiness, positive affect, success, well-being, life satisfaction, employee performance, income, marriage, friendship, conceptual model
MeSH terms
Adaptation, Psychological, Affect, Happiness, Health, Humans, Income, Job Satisfaction, Marriage, Models, Psychological, Negativism, Personal Satisfaction, Time Factors, Friends

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review